Fish
Goblin Shark
Mitsukurina owstoni · also called goblin shark, elfin shark
The goblin shark is one of the deep sea’s genuine oddities — a soft, pale-pink shark with a long flat paddle of a snout and a set of jaws that can leap out of its face like a jack-in-the-box to grab a fish. It is the last of a shark lineage that has existed, largely unchanged, since the age of the dinosaurs.
Overview
Goblin sharks live in deep water — mostly 270 to 960 metres, sometimes deeper — on continental slopes and seamounts in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific, with the most records from off Japan. They are slow, sluggish hoverers, hunting deep-sea fish, squid, and crustaceans.
Built for the deep and the dark
- A flabby body and soft skeleton keep it near neutral buoyancy for low-effort hovering.
- Skin so thin and unpigmented that the pink of the muscle and blood shows through.
- A long, flat snout packed with electroreceptors to sense the electric fields of hidden prey — it is soft, not a weapon.
Slingshot jaws
The jaws hang from elastic ligaments and can be flung forward almost the full length of the head in about 0.3 seconds, then snapped shut and retracted — among the fastest, most extreme bites of any shark. The alarming protruded jaw is only visible for that split second; the rest of the time it is tucked away.
A living fossil
The goblin shark is the only living member of the family Mitsukurinidae; near-identical fossils go back about 125 million years.
Not a threat
It lives far below where people go, is slow, and hunts small prey. No goblin shark has ever attacked a person, and human contact is limited to the rare individual hauled up dead in deep nets or filmed by a deep-sea camera.
Status
The goblin shark is Least Concern. It is caught only rarely and incidentally, and is thought to be widespread but uncommon. Because most specimens are juveniles, its true size, lifespan, and breeding remain unknown.
Goblin Shark: common questions
Why does the goblin shark look so strange?
Almost every feature reflects a life spent in cold, dark, food-poor deep water. The flabby body and soft, weakly calcified skeleton keep it close to neutrally buoyant so it can hover with little effort. The skin is so thin, pale, and poorly pigmented that the pink of the underlying muscle and blood shows through — colour is pointless where there is no light. The long, flat snout is a sensory organ crammed with electroreceptors for detecting the faint electric fields of prey it cannot see. And the small eyes are of limited use; the shark hunts by electroreception and smell. Its "goblin" look is an efficient design for its environment, but out of water — and especially after death, when it turns grey-brown and slack — it looks alien.
How do the jaws work?
The goblin shark's upper and lower jaws are not fused tightly to the skull; they hang from stretchy ligaments and can be pushed out and forward, and the shark can fire them almost the entire length of its head in roughly 0.3 seconds, then snap them shut and retract them. High-speed footage of a captive individual showed the jaws being projected at speeds and to extensions unmatched by any other shark, in a two-stage catapult motion. This lets a slow-swimming shark grab agile prey without having to lunge its whole body, and it means the terrifying-looking protruded jaw is only briefly on display during a strike — most of the time the jaws sit tucked back under the snout.
Is the goblin shark dangerous to humans?
No. It lives at depths of several hundred metres to over a kilometre, far below where people swim or dive, and it is a slow, sluggish animal built to catch small deep-sea fish and squid. There has never been a recorded goblin shark attack on a person, and the only human contact with the species is when one is hauled up dead or dying in deep trawl nets or on longlines, or, very rarely, filmed by a deep-sea camera. Handled carelessly a large specimen could bite, but the opportunity essentially never arises.
How often are goblin sharks seen?
Rarely, which is why each capture tends to make the news. A few dozen specimens are recorded in a typical decade, most of them from deep fisheries off Japan, where the species is caught often enough to have a Japanese name (tenguzame, after a long-nosed goblin of folklore), and scattered records come from Atlantic and other Pacific waters. Live sightings from submersibles and ROVs are far scarcer. Because most captured goblin sharks are juveniles and the adults are seldom seen, basic facts about its maximum size, lifespan, and reproduction remain unknown.